Chinese scientists cloned macaques for the first time and named them "the great Chinese people"
For the first time, molecular biologists from China were able to grow two full-fledged clones of the same monkey using the same technique used in cloning Dolly the sheep.
Qiang Sun, Director of the Primate Research Center at the KANG Institute of Neurophysiology in Shanghai
For the first time, scientists cloned an animal in July 1996 in Scotland. It was Dolly the sheep, and three "parents" were needed for the experiment: one left her his genetic material, the second transferred the first egg, and the third carried Dolly after the DNA of the first parent was transferred to the germ cell of the second.
After this successful experience, no scientific team managed to clone a monkey the same way as Dolly, before that they had to go through a huge number of failures. Scientists used 127 eggs, 109 of them became embryos, 79 reached the stage of surrogacy and only in six cases the surrogate mother became pregnant, and it was successfully completed only in two cases.
As Sun noted, the problem was solved by accelerating the transfer of the nucleus from an "ordinary" donor monkey cell to an empty egg. Scientists have also developed a special substance made of enzymes and RNA molecules that protects the DNA protein envelope from damage and causes the egg to divide after a new nucleus is inserted into it.
Thus, scientists managed to obtain two Javanese macaques (macaca fascicularis) with exactly the same DNA, produced by a surrogate mother eight and six months ago. The first monkey was named Zhong Zhong, and the second — Hua Hua. It turned out to be a play on words: the expression "zhonghua" in Chinese means "great Chinese people". Both cubs have no health problems and develop in the same way as other monkeys at this age.
Keywords: China | Cloning | Macaques | Monkeys | Scientists